Are you satisfied with your standard of living in Alabama
defined by all the things you can buy and do?

Are satisfied with Alabama?

Sounds like a poll question, doesn't it? That's because it
is. The Gallup organization asked just that question (and one more) in 2013 of
178,068 Americans spread across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. At
least 500 residents of every state were asked the question. In 41 states 1,000 or
more residents were surveyed. The survey was conducted from January through
December of 2013.

The second question the survey asked was: is your standard
of living getting better or worse?

Gallup did all its mathematical magic and found Alabamians
to rank near the bottom of states when it came to their satisfaction with their
standard of living. Just over half of us do think things are getting better,
however.

Anyway, I started looking a little deeper at the data and
found a number that caused me to pause and reassess. That number is the
percentage of Alabamians who said they are satisfied with their standard of
living. That number is 74 percent of you. A quarter of you, 25 percent, said
you are not satisfied with your standard of living.

Maybe I've hung around baseball too long where a team that
wins 74 percent of its regular season games will have won almost 120 games out
of a 162 game season. That does not happen folks. In the NFL, win 74 percent of
your games and you will have won almost 12 games in a 16 game regular season.

And, let me promise you that no politician in America, or
anywhere else I can think of, would not be doing backflips if 74 out of every
100 voters were satisfied with their performance.

To be fair, in this survey, the 74 percent of you who said
you were satisfied with your standard of living was one of the lowest
percentages among the states. Residents in 46 other states reported a higher
percentage of satisfaction with their standard of living than we in Alabama.

All of that is to ask this: are you satisfied with Alabama? If you are, why? If not, what would it take to satisfy you?

I know that's a broader question than Gallup asked, but this
isn't a scientific survey. It's an ongoing conversation about who we are and
what we think. Please email me or send me a tweet or write me the old fashioned
way. How to do all that is below.

Chuck Dean is connecting Alabama through the stories told by its people -- sometimes about themselves, sometimes about their neighbors, sometimes about the places they call home.

Share your stories, or introduce us to people we should connect with. Reach out on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram using #connectAL, email cdean@al.com or send Chuck a note at 2201 Fourth Ave. N, Birmingham AL 35203.